Butterfly Minds

THE NETHER

Ella Addison was a sweet innocent girl in her teenage years. She was kind, caring and generous to anyone and everyone. She was more of an insider, a person who would like to spend most of their time inside the house, but she also loved it when she went out. She was unique. She wasn't like most girls. She wasn't obsessed with makeup and fashion and she wasn't a tom boy either, a person who acts like a boy, likes boy things, basketball, football etc. She was okay with who she was. She just liked different things. Music, specifically 80's music, pizza, friends, and family and so on. But she also really liked a show she watched and re-watched multiple times. It was called 'Anonymous Objects'

Anonymous Objects was about this group of girls, 4 to be exact, Winn Byers, Michelle Wheeler, Lexis Sinclair and Daisy Henderson. They all led normal lives. They loved playing this board game called 'Dungeons and Dragons' they usually just called it 'D & D' though. Then one day, Winn goes missing and the girls go out looking for her. But then they find something way more interesting. They find a little boy with a buzz cut in the forest. Michelle takes him in and gives him shelter, he sleeps in a fort she built him. She tries talking to him. She finds out he has a tattoo with '011' written on it. He doesn't know his real name and is convinced that his name is Eleven and so for short Michelle calls him Leven. Leven ends up knowing where Winn is and revealing that she is trapped in an alternate dimension called 'The Nether' where it is exactly like Hawkins, Indiana, which is where they live except it is, dark and slimy and disgusting.

On the 6th of November Ella decided she was going to rest her eyes after a long day at school. A couple of hours passed and her eyes stated to flutter open. As soon as she was conscious she started coughing. Her back was hurting because she was laying on a hard cold surface. When she finally had the courage to open her eyes, she woke up on the floor of a familiar place. Way too familiar. A place that brought back memories.
Ella made her way through the dark, eerie and empty halls of the abandoned school. She was scared. Alone. It was dark. Very dark. Too dark for her liking. She felt something underneath her feet as they stepped lightly and curiously around the school. She looked down at the floor only to realize the floor is covered with a trail of blood leading somewhere. She was petrified, but she was always a curious girl so she followed this trail of the blood of what she imagined were all the people she left behind at this school. As she turned the corner and followed the trail with her eyes she looked up and saw something. It was glowing a dark maroon. It was covered in slime and vines all over. It looked kind of like a gate or a doorway of some sort. Wait. Was that a... a portal?!

Her fingers ran along the portal's outline. The closer she got to it and the more she thought of it the more it fiercely glowed brighter making it harder and harder for her to see clearly. Ella had so much going through her mind. She was trying so hard to process the thoughts and emotions she was feeling in her head. She heard cries coming from inside the portal. She felt as if her whole body was falling through a deep dark and endless black hole. She was frozen in place but before she could do anything a slimy, black almost non-human hand reached out and pulled her in. She screamed a bloodcurdling scream so loud it hurt her own ears but then she stopped realizing that there was no one to hear those screams. She stopped screaming. She stopped struggling against the monster's arms. She stopped trying. There was no use.

The portal led to a disgusting place, the place was covered in slime and goo and vines all over. The air was contaminated. She couldn't breathe. Everything went black.

She woke up in the monster's arms still. She was crying and she just broke against the monster's strong grip on her, she screamed and shrieked and suddenly the monster flew off of her and hit a wall. She felt something trickle down to her lips. Her nose was bleeding. She remembered the fact that in the show Anonymous Objects Leven had telekinesis and telepathy and every time he used his powers his nose would start to bleed, the amount of blood depending on how much power Leven uses. She looked back at the monster and her eyes went wide. She's in the nether. She is Leven. She has powers. That monster, in the show, it looks the same. The girls called it after one of the monsters in the game they played, D & D, the Thessalmonster. It had seven to eight heads, but it was knocked out cold. She heard the same screams and cries for help coming from straight ahead of her so she ran towards the direction of the screams and there laid Nina Schnapp the girl who played Winn Byers in Anonymous Objects.

Ella ran over to the girl. Nina was laying down on the floor, her skin was so pale and she was so skinny and thin so it was easy for Ella to carry her. Ella carried Nina and ran as fast as she could away from the Thessalmonster and away from everything that lived there. Nina was still unconscious so Ella ran out of the portal and laid Nina on the floor.

She raised her hand in the sky facing the portal and whispered "No more" with a stern look on her face. She then started screaming as blood gushed down from her nose and as she started levitating in the air. Nina started gaining consciousness. She looked up at Ella watching her with wide eyes as Ella rose off the ground and as the portal started closing. She was closing the gate for good this time so nothing like this would ever happen again. The portal was closed. It was done. She ended the terror. She knew what was coming now from watching the show. Leven would always collapse on the floor after he strongly used his powers for something big like this. And Ella was right, just then she collapsed on the floor. She felt weak. Unable to move she looked at Nina, tears in both their eyes.

"You-You saved me." Nina whispered softly to Ella. She nods
"I did."